Night Not-Very-Terrors

Working it out.

Night Terrors, season 6, second episode of the second half of the season.

To be honest with you, the idea of writing a review of this episode has slowed me down more than once.

I heard wonderful things about it: how scary it was, how clever it was, how apt the title was, what a brilliant script Mark Gatiss had written.

And I won't say any of those things are absolutely 100% wrong -- but I have watched Terrors two or three times now and every time I watch it I come away more strongly convinced of the fact that I paid for something I didn't get.

The story is simple enough but 'ware spoilers if you haven't seen the episode yet.

Small child is having nightmares: weird noises outside his window, in the closet, under the bed, etc., etc. The parents are powerless to do more than soothe and are discussing getting some kind of nebulous "professional help." The child overhears the conversation and, panicking, manages, without meaning to, to get a message to the Doctor. The Doctor arrives quite promptly and, with Amy and Rory, takes on the fun task of searching a multistory council flat for the child in question. Amy and Rory do not find him; the Doctor finds not only the child, but the child's father, and sets about solving the problem. Amy and Rory, meantime, have tried to use the elevator -- bad idea in council flats, apparently.

So far, so good.

My problem with the episode is not that you can figure it all out beforehand -- that's fine. The problem is that the end reveal is...exactly what you've figured out beforehand. And it isn't that interesting. The kid himself does little except pant and stare through the whole episode which makes your chest ache after awhile. The father is a great character to start with who gradually slides into being a cliche by the end. It's a nice difference that it's the father rather than the mother who has to undertake the journey and trials to get back the child but -- it's not enough to make the whole episode feel like it lives up to its publicity.

There are some clever startles -- "scare" would be too strong a word -- but they don't last. The dolls are only disturbing the first time you see them and after that...they lose punch very quickly. This is interesting because they're very similar to the Weeping Angels who simply become more terrifying every time you see them!

It is nice that this is another episode like "The Doctor Dances" where "...everybody lives!" but it doesn't put it up there with the best of this season as far as I can see. It's a solid entry but somewhere in the realm of "The Black Spot" rather than "The God Complex." This is only disappointing because I expected more from Mark Gatiss -- a fact which I'm sure causes him daily heartburnings.

Friday Fun Times

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do all of Doctor Who season 6 in under 10 minutes. :)

Did Anyone Get Hitler Out of the Cupboard?

Back to Doctor Who! Wheeeee!

After the pain, suffering, and loss that was A Good Man Goes to War, now we get the fun and frolick that is Lets Kill Hitler.

Really, Hitler is one long romp -- and that's not something you get to type very often, so bear with me while I repeat it: Hitler is one long romp.

I'll do my best to be spoiler-light, but seriously, folks, I had to have been one of the last people on the planet to see the end of season 6, so if you haven't seen it...well...seek help? Anyway, RAYOR.


I can say that everything you think about the first 5-10 minutes is true. When I say that one of the most important things about season 6 as a whole is "trust your gut," I mean it. If something seems -- weird, not quite right, strangely familiar, haunting, odd, off, or otherwise peculiar: go with it.

Lets Kill Hitler is a lot of fun with some seriousness wrapped up in the fluff: when Alex Kingston speaks, you listen. That's probably the best advice I can give you overall.

Try to ignore the worst of the dialogue ("...except, perhaps, the cruelest." She delivers it well but...it's a schlocky line.)


Nina Toussaint-White is awesome and if fans get to vote on the new, post-Pond companions, I want to vote for her! Her style as a pre-River River (I did warn for spoilers!) is fucking fantastic.


Rory has some wonderful moments here; I can't say how much I appreciate the time and attention he gets as a character in this season. While he's a solid back-up in season 5, he really starts to shine in 6 -- he steps out from Amy's shadow and wait for The Girl Who Waited if you want to see Rory and the Doctor start to get into it which, really, we've all been waiting for them to do, right? The Doctor has spent most of the last few seasons begging for a smackdown -- or smackdowns.

And the Tesselactor -- possibly misspelled here! -- is a lovely invention that I'm sure has Douglas Adams grinning to himself over some otherworldly cup of tea. The antibodies alone are worthy of a whome Adamsian side monologue along the lines of the towel or the Guide: "You will feel a slight stinging sensation -- and then death." "Please remain calm while your life is extracted." Fucking classic.

So enjoy it while it lasts, really. You've got The God Complex and The Girl Who Waited coming up before you get to Closing Time which is the only other episode that even comes close to being comic relief in the second half of this season so I'd suggest taking long juicy draughts of the craziness that is Lets Kill Hitler.

Friday Fun Times

Another 41 seconds of glory!

Friday Fun Times

49 seconds of pure awesome.

Friday Fun Times

Some DW shiny fun for your Friday morning...

Mondays Suck

So listen to Catherine Tate instead of me.

Rules Part 1

A Good Man Goes to War.

*claps hands*

Everybody ready? (Spoilers await, folks.)

Okay, Good Man is straight-up, cracked-out, full-on rock'n'roll Doctor Who -- I'm not sure how much caffeine Moffat pumped into his cast for this one but it is so totally absolutely worth it in every single possible way. It's such a frenetic rollercoaster of goodness, in fact, that it's kind of difficult to write anything about it.

I'm not even going to try to go over the story here. Suffice to say the big reveal is revealed: River is...well, River is River. She's also Amy and Rory's daughter but, really, you had ample time to figure that out during the season so it's not worth holding your breath through the whole episode waiting for it.

That said, the final reveal scene -- even without the reveal itself being a huge gasp-inducing moment -- is just...really really great. There's Amy and Rory and the Doctor and River and hugging and sexual innuendo and so much emotional energy passing between the characters that the screen practically crackles. It's just...sweet in the best possible way.

Other points of interest...

The good man. Clearly, as self-identified, the good man is not the Doctor: "Good men don't need rules. Now is not the time to find out why I have so many." Okay, good, I'll just be over here crouched in the corner whimpering gently, then.

This leaves us with relatively few options for the good man -- so, really, it's Rory. Which is kind of awesome because the show needs more Rory. Rory is coming from a relatively simple place: he wants to get his wife back and keep his family in one piece. It's not exactly a revolutionary goal in life but, given the events at the end of The Almost People, you can't blame him for being a bit tetchy: "Do I need to ask the question again?"

Rory has come such a long way from The Eleventh Hour -- and then, in a way, he hasn't. Rory has always been both observant and determined and, really, those qualities have only been enhanced by travelling with the Doctor, as the second half of the sixth season proves. He has a very handy knack of not being distracted by non-essentials: he sees the odd thing out or the thing that should be there and isn't and his habit of dogged insistence is extremely useful.

And the Doctor is not a good man in this; he doesn't even follow his own self-established rules, as Lady Vastra and Dorium Maldovar take a certain amount of pleasure in pointing out to him. The whole conversation with Colonel Manton ("Colonel RunAway") is just fucking terrifying; it's as close as the Doctor has come in quite awhile to losing it and it's so very very bad when he does that. And, of course, he gets bitten in the ass for it as Madame Kovarian waltzes off into the wild blue yonder with baby Melody quite neatly.

The secondary characters in this episode are fantastic, some of the best in the season: Jenny, Madame Vastra, Dorian, the Headless Monks, the Fat One, the Thin One, and Commander Strax. The baddies, particularly Madame Kovarian -- I wish I felt...better about. She's a little...uncentered. It's not clear why she's doing what she's doing or, even when Moffat tries to make it clear, it's still unclear what she gets out of it.

Friday Fun Times

Fucking awesome fanvid trailer for the Doctor Who 50th.

Flesh

So here's the deal. (RAYOR: mild spoiler-ish type things ahead.)

I really didn't enjoy either The Rebel Flesh or The Almost People that much. And despite having my DVDs of the first half of the season back in hand now -- and having had them for the best part of two months now, I think -- I really can't be bothered to watch them over again. I sort of have the same relationship with them as I did with The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood in season 5. Yes, they're good; yes, they have some interesting things to say; but they boiled such complicated, interesting conversations down into such Manichean dualities that I got very irritated.

This isn't to say that I wanted to use the discs for Flesh/People like Frisbees as I did for Earth/Blood. No, there wasn't anyone like Ambrose (*fists of rage*) in these episodes and I didn't want to kill anyone. I mostly felt sorry for everyone involved, particularly Jennifer who was so badly used by the whole storyline.

And then, of course, all sympathy gets diverted to Rory 'cause man does he get a rough deal. Just...really really awful.

But I'm a) not sure why this story had to be a two-parter; and b) not sure...well, I'm just generally not sure.

If the whole point of the 'ganger storyline is to convince us that gangers are people, too, then why does the Doctor dissolve the 'ganger Amy? It's no more her fault she's a 'ganger than it was...any of the other 'gangers! Why doesn't she get a chance to do her own thing like the others? If nothing else, wouldn't she be a valuable link back to whoever has the real Amy?

And what's with the 'gangers anyway? Are we supposed to cheer their political and personal emancipation? or worry that they're all going to turn out crazy huge blobs like Jennifer? And just...what...really was the point of all that?

Well, clearly, the point was to get us to the last ten minutes of The Almost People: that is, really, the only part of the show that advances the story arc at all.

Yes, there are some nice character moments outside of that -- Rory and 'ganger Jennifer; Amy and the 'ganger Doctor or the Doctor at all, really; the Doctor and Cleves -- but they're all rather brief and not enough to sustain the whole story.

And, yes, the thing with Jennifer-the-Blob at the end is...really quite unsettling.  But I'm not sure it deserved to spark a conversation in the Guardian about whether Doctor Who was getting too scary for kids! After all, that's a conversation that's been going on since...oh, probably about...the end of December, 1963? and it's not very interesting. Mary Whitehouse proved just how uninteresting it could be!

Really, I feel that Flesh/People just kind of mark time to get you to the real meat of the season: A Good Man Goes to War.

Rule Number One

This isn't really about Rule Number One: either the Whovian or Pratchettian version.

I have, thanks to the grace of the BBC and Amazon.com, finished season 6 of Doctor Who. Yes, yes, let there be rejoicing in the streets and cheering throughout.

And I have thoughts -- plenty of 'em! -- on an episode-by-episode basis, but as I think about those posts and what I want to say, one thought from the season-as-a-whole perspective keeps returning to me in an absolutely irresistible fashion.

It's a message to Steven Moffat and the message is this:

Mr. Moffat.

Thank you. In all seriousness, thank you so much for what you have done for a show I have loved for many, many years. Between you and Russell T. Davies, you have done what I never seriously considered to be possible, so thank you.

However, having just watched season 6 -- good one with Gaiman, by the way -- I have one word for you and that word is this: midichlorions.

Google it if you have to or simply watch Star Wars: Phantom Menace.

I urge you to think.

Think very carefully.

Think very long and hard and for many many hours, or possibly days, before you explain what no-one in their right minds wants you to explain.

Thank you for your consideration.

Friday Fun Times

The world's briefest intro to Doctor Who....

And I got this from a SciFiWire story but the text surrounding it is as stupid as everything else SFW ever puts up, so I'm not linking to it.

So, really, I suppose this should be a Friday thing but y'know what? It's shaping up to be kind of a rough week, I don't have a lot of time to put a more complicated post together... and, honestly, I think we all need this.

Don't you think we need this?

And here's how they did it.

Thanks to Diana for pointing this out to me when my normal news sources were sadly remiss. :)

Since I kind of think of it as "Whovian Wednesdays" around here -- although, obviously, I would never title anything that because, God, what kind of person do you think I am? -- here is something Whovian for your mid-week.

Also, I can't face thinking about The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People just now and I really do have to watch the episodes again to refresh a few details before I wibble on about them.

Normally I wouldn't link to io9 because I don't like the site that much but I can't resist the breakdown of 10 Totally Different TV Shows That Doctor Who Has Been Over the Years.

dr_who_who by the-quick-brown-fox.

"Thief!"

Post-facto edit: So I have had an incredible amount of trouble writing this post. I've been working on it on-and-off for three weeks now and I'm just going to throw it out there. Know before you read that it may not make that much sense and I know I'm missing huge huge huge things. Sorry 'bout that. Blame it on the medication if you like; I do.

I'm going to admit it right up front: The Doctor's Wife would have had to bork loudly and badly in about 9,000 different ways at once before I didn't love it. I went into it not only wanting to be pleased but feeling more than a little bit confident that I would be pleased.

'Cause -- did you notice the writing credit at all? Yeah, this dude, right here. And since I've pretty much enjoyed everything he's ever written -- with the exception of Sandman but that isn't Gaiman's fault; that's my ex's fault -- I was pretty much right there with Wife from the beginning. (Okay, if you don't know who Neil Gaiman is, that last paragraph makes next to no sense. Still, if you don't know who he is, you have a lot of treat coming your way! I suggest starting either with Stardust or Neverwhere but, really, just pick a title that grabs your eye and go with it. Enjoy. There are also great movie/TV adaptations of both of the above, just in case that helps you out at at all. Obviously -- read the book first. :))

But then -- you know what the bonus to all this was? It was fucking awesome. It didn't need help to be loved because it was freakin' great. (My real problem with it? The sound on my DVD was not great -- we had to ramp up the volume to a little over half and still had problems.)

Read on at your own risk of spoilers.

Plus, I have a slight shame issue: I failed to recognize the voice of Michael Sheen. Whoopsy!

The basic story for Wife is very simple (as with a lot of Gaiman's best short stories): the Doctor is decoyed to an asteroid, thinking he has received a message from an old Time Lord friend in peril. Meanwhile, an Ood removes mind and soul from a young woman named Idris as she is assured by an older woman she calls Auntie that everything will be fine because there will be a Time Lord along shortly. The Doctor, Amy and Rory in tow, arrives and -- well, everything really isn't fine. Gaiman begins to ring the creepy changes as soon as the Doctor sets foot on the asteroid -- earlier, if you notice that Auntie, her companion Uncle, and the Ood, Nephew, don't seem...hooked up right. Idris herself has been acting strangely since the TARDIS arrived and her first scene with the Doctor is just great: "I just thought of a new thing about kissing!"

Idris is a delightful, sad, heartbreaking new character -- mostly because you never really know what Idris herself is like. The original Idris is gone in the first few moments of the show. Who knows what the real Idris was like! But the TARDIS in human form? As Amy asks the Doctor: "Did you wish really hard?" I know it's become a truism for the new series for fans to say that the true love of the Doctor's lives is the TARDIS but, seriously, folks? It's true. And seeing that made more visible for the rest of us -- well, I normally want to give Gaiman hugs but now I want to hug him, his kids, his dogs, his assistant, and his wife. Just for the sake of having been somewhere around the creation of this fantastic conceit of the TARDIS embodied.

Watching the TARDIS-as-woman and the Doctor interact is wonderful, particularly since Idris is such a delight: she's sharp, funny, and gives the Doctor shit. And her take on their relationship is great stuff: "I wanted to see the universe so I stole a Time Lord and ran away." !! Yes, please! (It's also wonderful that she continually refers to the Doctor as "her thief.")

Alongside all this lovely, however, is a good dose of both sad and genuinely scary: House, the living asteroid who has been...well, up to no good, steals the TARDIS (minus the energy that is now in Idris' body) and makes a run for it with Rory and Amy trapped inside. The mind games House puts them through are really quite uncomfy making -- time becomes a suddenly flexible thing and Amy, for the first time really, is faced with Rory getting angry at her for abandoning him: "You left me again!" The graffiti scrawled on the TARDIS walls as Rory ages and dies without Amy is terrifying. It brings back unpleasant memories of Day of the Moon with the marker slashes on everyone's skin to mark encounters with the Silence.

The Doctor's temper, too, is volatile in this episode: when he discovers what House has been up to, we see shadows of the scene in Eleventh Hour where he calls the Atraxi back for a scolding: the Doctor is always distressing to be around when he gives into his urge to deliver the universe a righteous smackdown.

But the centrepiece of the episode and what makes it an absolute gem is the Doctor and Idris: it's heartbreaking, hysterically funny, charming, lovable -- and I can pretty much guarantee you will never watch The Big Bang the same way again.

Thoughts for the Soon-to-be-Fan

This is a rebroadcast of a post I originally wrote for the Pursuit of Harpyness. If you've already read it there, apologies; come back on Friday for something more original! (Okay, it probably won't be technically "original," but it will be different.) And I'll try to get my act in gear re: The Doctor's Wife for next week, I swear.

When Anna originally asked me if I would be interested in doing some guestblogging on what I call "the orange blog," she suggested that I could think about writing about Doctor Who companions -- possibly from the original series -- and why they are awesome. This is largely because I spent a lot of time complaining about the bloggers who complained about the length of Amy Pond's skirt. (Short version: who cares about the length of her fracking skirt? If you're staring at her legs, you are totally missing the point. End short version.)

I considered this, but then another friend -- the wonderful Lola -- suggested in an email that a primer for those baffled but intrigued by the Doctor Who universe and fandom might be a good idea. And before I could plan, really, I was already suggesting "rules" and a collection of episodes to Anna via chat. What follows has been cleaned up and expanded, but still.

For those who don't know the series, welcome! The TARDIS has lots of space; find a seat and hang on. For those who do -- well, I hope what follows is at least a little bit funny.

1. It's bigger on the inside.

2. Never lose faith in the sonic screwdriver. And prepare to be charmed by its regenerative capacities. From originally looking like a tire pressure gauge, it now looks like some kind of whacky mini-LCD flashlight crossed with a tire pressure gauge. And it goes "chirp" a lot. Enjoy this.

3. Time Lords. Time Lords are...a real bitch, honestly. In the original series -- 1963-1989 inclusive bar a couple of BBC worker strikes in the '70s and '80s -- the Time Lords were, more or less, supposed to be the magical deus ex machina good guys. The Doctor (no spoilers here) is a Time Lord -- if he is awesome, then shouldn't his planet be just overflowing with awesomeness? Well, yes, and no. If you look closely at the original series Time Lords (I'm thinking here of things like the last part of of the Patrick Troughton episode War Games where the Time Lords force the Doctor to regenerate and exile him to Earth and the first several season of Jon Pertwee's Doctor where he's dealing with the exile and, by the way, having had bits of his memory tampered with also by the Time Lords) they're not so sweet and kindly. They're actually pretty devious, rather self-centered, and capable of being quite cruel. The Doctor makes more than one reference (The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors) to the Time Lords' history and how it "ain't all lavendar." In the new series, head writer Russell T. Davies and, in his turn, current show-runner Steven Moffat, have taken that idea and run further and faster with it than I think anyone expected them to. If you're an old series fan (like me) who always secretly thought the Time Lords were probably on crack, The End of Time (the last of the David Tennant specials) will warm the twisted cockles of your heart. If you're a totally new fan, enjoy the cracktasticness of having illusions destroyed.

4. Anything being in the TARDIS other than the Doctor, companion(s), and specifically invited guests is bad. Any sounds, any voices, faces -- if there's an actual physical person, then whoa. If you hear a deep bell tolling (see Cloister Bell) prepare for the deep and sticky 'cause it's gonna get bad in here.

Fifth Doctor.
(Peter Davison.) Note celery.

5. There have been 10 other regenerations of the Doctor. If you don't like this one, there are plenty of others to choose from! but, please: leave others to their enjoyment. Almost every fan has a particular regeneration of the Doctor they consider to be "theirs." It's often the first Doctor you encounter but doesn't have to be (hey, it's a fandom: there are no real rules here!) If you love Peter Davison (5), that's awesome; I'd love to listen to you enthuse for hours on why celery is the greatest thing ever; but, please, don't knock Matt Smith (11) for not being David Tennant (10). And so on and so forth.

6. That being said, the Doctor is, in essence, always the Doctor.

7. The Daleks are small irritable pepper-pots who want to rule the universe. Their history with the Doctor goes back to the second episode of the first season of the series; more about this in a later post. Give thanks to the estate of the late, great Terry Nation who created them that Davies and Moffat get to play with them. They will always come back. They will always be short-tempered. They will always want to rule the universe and/or kill the Doctor. It's just what they do.

8. Sontarans look like pissy potatoes. If you were the genetically modified member of a clone society entirely based on military conquest and domination, you'd be easily annoyed, too.

9. Yes, you can escape the entire Cyber empire on foot, at a gentle stroll. Don't let them concern you unduly.

10. The Master. Just -- remember that name. It will be important and when you need to know why -- you'll know why.

The Master. (John Simm).

11. Okay, here's why: the Master is, along with the Daleks, the Cybers, and the Sontarans, one of the longest-running and most popular villains on the show. He has been through at least two official regenerations (I'm counting Roger Delagado, Anthony Ainley, and John Simm here although there are eight actors who have played the part one way and another) but more bodies than that and is, as Time Lords go, so far at the end of his regeneration rope (having started in the show at 12 back in the day with Jon Pertwee and the Third Doctor), that his rope has given up and gone home (see point 14). He makes up what he no longer has in regenerations through body-stealing and black magic.

12. The Time War. Think of it as Event Zero (for the new series) and almost completely irrelevant (for the old series). To know more, watch David Tennant (10), season 2-4 of the new series. And then, when you understand it, come back and explain it to me.

13. Companions. Used to be called 'assistants' back in the '60s and '70s. Often, though not always, a young woman; often, though not always, a single person travelling with the Doctor, sometimes for multiple series. Serves the function of the audience: asks the question to advance the plot; gets lost/poisoned/captured/hypnotised/drugged; goes and opens the door with "Do Not Open" on it; wanders into places which should not be wandered into; and, in the new series more than the old to my mind, keeps the Doctor a little more in the light than he might otherwise be. Classic companions from the original series include Susan, Jamie, Zoe, the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Leela, Romanadvoratnalundar, Sergeant Benton, Adric, and Ace. (If you want to discuss the politics of skirt length, do it somewhere else.) 

14. Regeneration. Time Lords -- of which the Doctor is occasionally not the last; see point 3 -- get to regenerate when a body is old, worn-out, or too badly injured. They get 12 regenerations. This is old series canon. Steven Moffat may (or may not) be on a road to reinvent this from the ground up.

15. Hey, I came up with 14; I figure y'all get to do some work here, too: what's your 15? If you're a fan, what's the thing you tell your friends when you're trying to get them hooked?

Friday Fun Times

Hey, I owe you something cheerful after Wednesday, right?

So here it is: cheerful and terrible at once! (But not terrible in the classic sense of the word.)

Oh, Doctor

This week hasn't worked out quite like I planned, but this is something Whovian! And it's Wednesday!

Take this next bit seriously, though: if you haven't seen the end of the first half of Season 6 yet, do not watch this.


I cannot stress this enough.

Really. Do not hit play.

Which Captain Jack Would Be Relevant Here?

Here we are today to talk about the pirate episode of season 6. I know, I know: it has a real name. Black Spot something-or-other. But, honestly -- are we ever going to call it anything other than "the pirate episode"? No, we are not. So lets just start as we mean to go on and leave it there.

But first: a public service announcement from the end of A Good Man Goes to War: WHAT THE FUCK! SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT.

Ahem.

Moving on. Spoilers, yada yada.

The Curse of the Black Spot. (I did say it had a real title.) Overall, this has much the same feel as, for instance, Victory of the Daleks. It's a fun, charming monster-of-the-week that tries to do something a little more serious at the end and, depending on how much you liked the rest of the episode, succeeds or fails accordingly.

I have heard people complaining about this episode because it's not like the season openers were. To sidetrack for a minute and be fully honest, I don't really read the Tor.com posts about Doctor Who (the first link) because I don't like their DW bloggers. They seem to me to be all new series fans who expect the show to be something that, in its DNA, it isn't. But that's a post for another day. (If nothing else, the episode Teresa Jusino talks about in her post, The Web Planet, is one of my favorite Hartnell episodes. I love the bugs; I love the planet; I love Ian. So bite me, Ms. Jusino: if your taste is for the adrenalin-driven and simplistic, I suggest you try Supernatural or Battlestar Galactica. Or, say, The Hills. And get the hell out of my party.)

Ahem. *kofkof* Sorry about that: bad fan moment. I get no cookies. Go your ways, Ms. Jusino: I'm sure there's room enough in the TARDIS for all of us.

Anyway, no, Black Spot is not the most exciting episode that the first half of season 6 has to offer: it is a fun way to spend 45 minutes. The TARDIS lands on a pirate ship that is being haunted by a siren who claims anyone who is injured or sick on the ship; even a minor cut is enough for her to turn up and whisk off the luckless sailor to -- heaven knows where. Or the Doctor knows where. There's also a grumpy captain and a mysterious stowaway.

Arthur Darville gets to have a marvelous time in this episode doing a cod version of Alan Tudyk's fantabulous stoned turn in Death at a Funeral. Rory is injured fairly early on in the episode and the siren keeps trying to take him away; Amy and the Doctor basically sit on him, but his behavior when the siren around is a hoot.

Turns out the siren can enter the ship -- to claim the aforementioned injured victims -- not simply through the water around or on the ship but through any reflections. It may be that all reflections are now open doors from one universe or dimension to another. (Is anyone else harking back to the Family at this point? 'Cause I swear, if that little girl with the red balloon starts popping out of mirrors, I am going to haul my couch out away from the wall so I can hide behind it.)

Now, personally, I think Black Spot is doing something at least a little more interesting than a lot of the reviews I have seen of it seem to think. The siren, it seems, is a medical program from a ship stalled in the same area as the pirate ship but in a different dimension. (Stones of Blood!) The siren is also not being as unhelpful as everyone thought: what she's trying to do is carry out her program and heal the injured and sick. (The Empty Child!) Seems like her program is a little damaged, though, and she can't quite figure out how to do her job right: all she can do is place people in stasis and leave them. (The Doctor Dances!) So, if nothing else, there are a crap-ton of series nods in this episode which are endlessly fun.

There are some lovely moments in this episode: the captain and his stowaway son; the siren and Amy in the stasis chamber; Amy and Rory in the TARDIS -- plus another near-death experience for Rory which got the response from the three of us watchers: "Oh, please, no, not again -- c'mon, Rory!" And sighs of relief all 'round when he didn't die (Kenny was funny...but only on South Park.) And the Doctor is yet again confronted with his desire to save everyone -- or at least to try and keep people from killing people or things until the situation is understood.

I really do think if you just take this episode for a cheerful, amusing romp with pirates, it's a pretty solidly good time. Yes, the CPR is wrong; is there a TV show that gets it right? Yup, there are dialogue goofs and continuity fluffs and it's just generally not perfect. Gosh. Shall we all storm the studios of BBC Wales and burn the place down now? Does the story hang together as tightly as (we hope) the season openers will (in the end)? Well, no -- but if everything were Day of the Moon, frankly, I don't know if I could cope. And there are space pirates at the end? Do you understand this, people? Space frelling pirates! Okay? Yes? Are we all good now?

So when it comes time to click into that third episode, make some good tea or get a glass of wine, pick out your favorite candy, and relax a bit. (Oh, except for when the woman peers through the wall at Amy. Tense up then. 'Cause, believe me, when you hit the end of the season, you're going to wish you spent a lot more time being tense around those moments.)

It's Not This Cold in Boston. Yet.

Thanks to Neil Gaiman for linking to this because I might not have found it otherwise.

And for the win mix of new series/old series references!